I recommend reading Bret Devereaux for examples of deft handling of definitional issues in history. For example, his series on the fall of Rome [1]. It's certa

I recommend reading Bret Devereaux for examples of deft handling of definitional issues in history. For example, his series on the fall of Rome [1]. It's certainly possible to get into silly disputes about what counts as the "Roman empire" and what it means for it to "fall" but he uses this as a starting point to talk about what evidence we have about actually happened. Different historians define things differently depending on their perspectives, but you just accept and deal with that. Similarly, I could see someone wanting to talk about religion to make some definitions just to be clearer what they're talking about, but then you go on to talk about what people actually do. [1] https://acoup.blog/category/collections/fall-of-rome/ https://acoup.blog/category/collections/fall-of-rome/